Watermelon Denim

After all of my galaxy fabric paint success (here and here) I became more confident with fabric paint and expanded my horizons. These Nasty Gal x Lazy Oaf Watermelon denim shorts were the inspiration for my next summer project. I lusted after these shorts for a while, but the booty-showing-length and the price deterred my purchasing them. Instead, I decided to put my free time to good use. As this was also created pre-blog, there aren't many images documenting the process. I began my journey to watermelon greatness by thrifting for high waisted shorts, preferably pink. As you can see in the first photograph, they weren't quite as pink as I wanted. So, thus began step one.

Step One: Dye sad pink shorts with Tulip fabric dye

Step two: (after washing and drying) Paint pink shorts to resemble watermelon. Easy!

I chose to cuff the shorts so I had a clean line to work with, rather than cutting them, but it's really personal preference. I painted by hand, using Q-tips for the black seed detail and brushes for the green cuff. I used Slick Tulip paint, which gave the green cuff a leathery, shiny look. It took a few coats but I was able to get solid coverage. I just used the inspiration shorts as a template to create my own thrifty, less model-thin-booty-showing version. My watermelon shorts were certainly a hit at the local baseball stadium!

Galaxy Part II

Shortly after I made the most perfect galaxy shorts I went on a galaxy rampage. I galaxied everything from canvas sneakers to my graduation cap. I even painted some canvas and created galaxy animal paintings. You can see this was documented thoroughly through instagram:

The Beginning: High Waist Galaxy Shorts

A few months back I graduated from college, which freed up a bunch of time. I've been enjoying my summer and my days off from work. Of course since I went from an intense busy schedule to a quiet slow one, I became restless. This is when I began crafting. I've been on Pinterest for a while, not for the usual things like momly recipes (although there are some good ones!) rather, I used it as a sort of place to keep my inspirations. This is, I suppose, the intended purpose of Pinterest but instead of pinning recipes I was pinning weird artsy shit from Tumblr and fashion trends. I began seeing things and saying to myself, "I could make that," and since I've finished school I actually had time. There was nothing stopping me besides laziness so I began my first project.

High Waist Galaxy Shorts.

Now since I did this pre-blog there are no before and after photographs, no detailed descriptions showing step by step processes. Honestly I'm not sure if you'll be finding much of that on this blog. I find it unnecessary most of the time, your own creative license should allow you to do what you think best.

Anyways the first thing to do was find a pair of (preferably) black "mom shorts" from Goodwill and/or other local thrift stores. Throughout the summer my nearby Goodwill has tons of shorts, and at first glance you may think, "ew, gross, this is not the 1980's and I am not a mom." You have to force yourself to see past the awkwardness and see the potential. I try on various shorts until I find a pair that fits satisfactorily, sometimes it helps to roll/cuff the bottoms so they aren't awkwardly long and you'll start seeing the potential. The benefits of thrifting are as follows: if you fuck them up, its not a big deal because they were probably less that $5.00. This, at least, is my personal outlook.

So once you've found some acceptable jean shorts you will need the following:

Fabric paint (I use Tulip)
           Blue
           Purple
           Pink
           Silver/Sparkle
Sponge

I wanted to only do certain sections of my shorts, so I taped off the stuff I didn't want to get paint on using masking tape or duct tape or whatever you have. You can also choose to use glow in the dark fabric paint, which I did for little stars, but it isn't necessary. It is also your choice if you want matte or slick fabric paint, either works in my opinion. Once again use your brain, and your artistic license. Also if you cannot find black shorts, any other color works, just go buy black fabric dye and do that before anything else.

So I began by sponging on the blue sporadically, leaving lots of black space open. Then the same with the purple, overlapping a little but not much. The pink is then applied the same way, with the sponge, very light and kind of inbetween the blue and purple. Next I went over a few spots with the silver sparkle paint and sponge and dotted on a few glow in the dark stars. Voila! Sponge painting shorts can be fun! Follow the directions on the paint for drying, but they should be dry and wearable the following day!